Rob Harris Email & Phone Number

Alexandria, Virginia, United States

The Financial Resources Management Division provides budget formulation, budget execution, and financial analysis for USPTO's four Information Technology Product Lines (Patent, Trademark, Enterprise Business, and Enterprise Infrastructure Product Lines).

Alexandria, Virginia, United States

As the Program Manager within USPTO's Chief Information Office, I was focused on USPTO Big Data, Open Data, Mobility, Trademark Legacy, and Trademark Next Generation programs. Primary responsibilities included acquisition management, financial management, program and project management, Capital Planning and Investment Control, and Systems Development Lifecycle requirements for approximately $50 million annually.

I was the site lead for a team of 30+ contractors supporting a multi-year, multi-billion dollar information technology program within the Department of Homeland Security. I was directly responsible for the financial management team, which performed all capital planning, life cycle costing, budget formulation, budget justification, and budget execution activities. Additionally, I actively managed teams responsible for project management, acquisition management, technical integration, integrated communication, and program control activities (earned value management, risk management, confirmation management, and process management).

I was responsible for all financial, budget, and investment management support for the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Modernization Office's 10-year, multi-billion dollar information technology modernization effort. This includes formulating, justifying, allocating, and executing all funding requirements; interacting with senior government officials at CBP, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), OMB, and Congress; developing financial management plans, processes, and procedures; developing Modernization expenditure plans; estimating program cost, schedule, and risk; developing business cases and supporting OMB 300 exhibits; and developing and providing all budgetary documentation necessary for the timely and accurate planning, programming, and execution of CBP funds.

I led the Financial Management Team and served as advisor to the USPTO Chief Information Officer for all financial management issues. I was responsible for approximately $200 million in annual information technology investments. Primary responsibilities included capital investment justification, budget formulation linked to information technology workload projections, budget execution and monitoring, and automated cost accounting. I led an effort to implement a portfolio management program, which integrated strategic management themes, project management information, planned and actual cost information, and benefits and associated risks. This program ultimately resulted in a more efficiently managed portfolio of information technology projects.

I gained experience working with all aspects of the federal budget process including budget formulation, budget justification, and budget execution. I developed a working knowledge of appropriation law, government scoring rules, rescissions, reprogrammings, and OMB regulations. I worked with the USPTO’s Chief Financial Officer to establish a formal planning process that enabled the agency to address the challenges of growth in workload and staffing, demand for information technology, and operating in an international environment. I led the USPTO’s fiscal year 2000 and 2001 strategic planning and budget processes. This included coordinating and preparing justification and briefing materials for the Department of Commerce, OMB, and Congressional staffs, and negotiating USPTO annual appropriation language with OMB.I served as Revenue Projection Team Lead and was tasked with forecasting patent and trademark application filing levels, other USPTO workloads, and associated revenue amounts. This work was critical to ensuring that the USPTO met federal anti-deficiency requirements. I led an agency-wide study on USPTO user fees that included interviews with agency executives, facilitating nation-wide customer roundtable meetings with patent attorneys, corporate counsel, and independent inventors, and ultimately resulted in a legislative proposal to change the USPTO user fee structure. I assisted in implementing USPTO’s activity-based costing system, and established a salary projection system within the USPTO’s Data Warehouse. This included defining business rules, performing variance testing against actual data from the general ledger, and marketing the system throughout the USPTO program areas.

Masters, Public Administration

Activities and Societies: Key Executive Program

Bachelors, Business Administration/Finance